Boys detail intense days in Taliban training camp

Pakistani army: Militants kidnap, brainwash kids

August 11, 2009|By Alex Rodriguez, Tribune Newspapers

MINGORA, Pakistan — The 14-year-old boy with acne dotting his chin yanked down the scarf concealing his face and recounted his 12 days in a Taliban training camp -- starting with the day six masked militants kidnapped him as he picked onions on a farm in the Swat Valley.

They blindfolded him and brought him to an abandoned girls school, he said, where he and scores of other Pakistani boys ran hills for 2 1/2 hours every day and listened to Taliban trainers extol the glory of waging holy war.

"They were always preaching jihad and telling us it was our ... duty," the boy said. "They said we shouldn't let anyone hinder us. And if our parents stood in the way, we were told we could kill them."

The youth is just one of more than 100 boys whom the Pakistani military says the Taliban either recruited or kidnapped and held at numerous training camps. The military arranged for four of the boys to meet with reporters at a former school in Mingora, the Swat Valley's largest city.

Pakistani military leaders say they are not sure how many boys are still with the Taliban but that those who managed to escape returned to their parents, who notified authorities. The military said it quickly descended on the camps where the boys had been held, but the Taliban had pulled up stakes.

Army Maj. Nasir Khan said many of the youths were being trained as scouts to report on the movements of Pakistani troops so militants could place roadside bombs to inflict maximum damage. Others, he said, would be trained to one day become hard-core militants.

Khan said the five boys he met with had told him they were abducted by the Taliban and taken to the camps.

Lt. Gen. Nadeem Ahmed, however, said nine youths he interviewed, all from poor families in Mingora, told him they were lured by promises of "good food and a good living." "They were told that whatever they wanted to do, they'd be able to do it," he said. "That was the rallying cry -- it wasn't about religion, it was more materialistic."

Although none of the boys interviewed said they were being trained as suicide bombers, Ahmed said the Taliban often relies on youths to carry out such attacks, and that some among the recent wave of recruits could have eventually been trained as suicide bombers.

"Suicide attackers aren't hard-core Taliban terrorists -- these are boys who are picked up by the Taliban and brainwashed," Ahmed said. "These boys are just fodder for the Taliban, expendable commodities."

Inside a school building in Mingora, the four boys -- one 14 and the others 16 -- told of their abduction by Taliban militants in February and their eventual escape.

None of the boys would give their names. All wore scarves to mask their faces, but during the interview they found the scarves irritating and tugged them down.

One boy, a 16-year-old, said he was playing cricket with two friends when two masked militants accosted them, accusing them of trespassing on Taliban land.

The boys were blindfolded and taken to a camp where about 150 other boys were being trained, he said. At his camp, he said, conditions were harsh. Food was scarce, and at times dinner amounted to a piece of flatbread shared among four boys. The recruits had to wake up before sunrise for morning prayers, then run up and down the hillsides.

Calisthenics and at times firearms demonstrations followed. In the afternoons there were indoctrination sessions.

Not every boy at the camp spent the days conjuring ways of escaping, the 14-year-old said.

"There were boys who were forcibly taken, but there were others who voluntarily came to the camp, and there were a lot of them," he said. "Many of the kids were happy there. They thought it was good to be with the Taliban, and to fight jihad."